The Church Of Pantloadology

Eager as ever to give sensible people fodder as he continues to prosecute his war on common sense, The Pillsbury Pundit floats yet another rhetorical air biscuit. Aside from the usual noteworthy fact that someone still pays him for this nonsense, this column features some extra special metaphors. One wonders how long Pantload's been saving up this slice of greatness:

Lord knows I have my problems with President Bush. He taps the federal coffers like a monkey smacking the bar for another cocaine pellet in an addiction study.

As TBogg points out, don't the conservatarderati have some sort of unwritten pact to not use the words "Bush", "monkey", and "cocaine" in the same article, much less the same sentence? That sound you just heard was the reverberation of the headslap Pantload just got from Father Cliffy, and the subsequent sloshing of Jonah's man-boobs. (I couldn't swear off Goldberg/man-boob jokes if I tried. Twelve steps just ain't enough, folks.)

Yes, the Iraq invasion has gone badly, and to deny this is to suggest that Bush meant for things to turn out this way, which is even crueler than saying he failed to get it right.

Aww, so it's "cruel", is it? Is it crueler than living in 130º heat with no electricity because some idiot halfway around the world had no clue what he was getting into? Crueler than being dragged out of your house by a death squad, to have your eyes gouged out and be tortured with a fucking power drill? Fucking asshole. You want to talk "cruelty", Jonah, I'd say "unfairness" to Dear Leader is quite a ways further down the list from the various manifestations of sheer brutality that he and he alone unleashed.

And forget the trope of "every major intel agency thought". Yes, they all thought. They did not initiate invasion and botch the occupation. They did not stovepipe and cherry-pick hortatory rumors. They did not arrogate certitude unto themselves, and pretend that they were so much fucking smarter than everyone else. You know who did all that? That poor Christian man we're all being so darned hard on. Poor him. Mean us.

And then there's Hurricane Katrina. Yes, the federal government could have responded better. And of course there were real tragedies involved in that disaster. But you know what? Bad stuff happens during disasters, which is why we don't call them tickle-parties.

The anti-Bush chorus, including enormous segments of the mainstream media, sees Katrina as nothing more than a good stick for beating on Piñata Bush's "competence." The hypocrisy is astounding because the media did such an abysmal job covering the reality of New Orleans (contrary to reports, there were no bands of rapists, no disproportionate deaths of poor blacks, nothing close to 10,000 dead, etc.). It seems indisputable that Katrina highlighted the tragedy of New Orleans rather than create it. Long before Katrina, New Orleans was a dysfunctional city in a state with famously corrupt and incompetent leadership, many of whose residents think that it is the job of the federal government to make everyone whole.

The Mississippi coast was hit harder by Katrina than New Orleans was. And although New Orleans' levee failure was a unique problem - one the local leadership ignored for decades - the devastation in Mississippi was in many respects more severe. And you know what? Mississippi has the same federal government as Louisiana, and reconstruction there is going gangbusters while, after more than $120 billion in federal spending, New Orleans remains a basket case. Here's a wacky idea: Maybe it's not all Bush's fault.

Heh-indeedy. This from the guy who infamously "joked" about the Mad Max/Waterworld post-apocalyptic scenario that people trapped in the Superdome had best prepare themselves for. And it is pretty fuckin' hilarious when you think about it, that while the whole world is watching a great American city go under, with bloated bodies floating through the streets, people trapped on their roofs, the less fortunate suffocating in their attics as the water inexorably rose past their necks, old people keeling over in their lawn chairs, some fat fuck in his Legacy Pundit Underoos cracks wise and evokes cheesy movies. God forbid he'd dare say a word about the overwhelming impression of indifference displayed by Bush, screwing around on the West Coast and taking his sweet time getting back to his command post.

It's not true, but let's just say for the sake of argument that the reflexive conservatard trope of "Katrina was made worse entirely because of state and local ineptitude" was true. Isn't it still the responsibility of the feds to be aware of this supposed ineptitude and unpreparedness, and be ready to step in and let The Decider work his decidin' magic? Or was it to send his discount ass out to San Diego to try once again to conflate Iraq with World War 2, and to crash John McCain's birthday party? Because that's exactly what Bush did, while the rest of us watched New Orleans clog with people trying to get the hell out, and others simply unable to leave, bracing themselves for nature's fury, and an indifferent response from a feckless little twit.

I would derisively ask if a picture needs to be drawn, but we all saw the video of Bush being briefed on this, sitting there unresponsive, looking like he wished he had the remote so he could flip it to the F Troop marathon over on TV Land. The picture was drawn quite clearly, over and over again. It is Pantload's problem that he refuses to see the obvious pattern of Bush's incompetence and indifference, not the fault of those mean ol' libruls who keep expecting Bush to do his fucking job.

As for Mississippi's level of recovery as compared to that of New Orleans, let's keep in mind that its far lower population density led to far less human damage, and far fewer of its citizens forced to move or rendered homeless. Oh yeah, and Mississippi not only has a Republican governor, but one who has been chair of the RNC, and is a major player in the workings of the party. I'm sure it's all just coincidence and gumption that have made the difference in Mississippi.

Political dissatisfaction with the president rests entirely on Iraq and overall Bush fatigue. The rest amounts to little more than Iraq-motivated brickbats gussied up to look like freestanding complaints. That's how hate works: It looks for more excuses to hate in the same way that fire looks for more stuff to burn.

That's why Bush's Democratic critics flit about like bilious butterflies, exploiting each superficial or transient problem just long enough to score some points in the polls, then moving on. Bush's Medicare plan was an egregious corporate giveaway, they cried, until seniors overwhelmingly reported that they like it. And the Patriot Act? Can anyone even remember what the Democrats were whining about? I think it had something to do with libraries that were never searched.

Look, things could obviously be a lot better. But they could be a lot worse too. John Kerry could be president.

What an idiot. There's just no other way to call this one. Let's take this poorly cobbled-together conflation and dispense with it right quick. First, the hate: the definition of a polarized country is that there's fury on both sides. Damned if I ever see anyone take a stab at the Dolchstosslegende loons who fester in the nether regions of talk radio, for starters. But then, since Pantload knows all about nourishment, he certainly knows where his bread gets buttered. Therefore, all the "hate" exists on the left, even though virtually every single notable instance of exhortation to even polemic violence has emanated from the sphincter of the right. QED, muthafuckas!

Next, Bush's Medicare boondoggle is neither superficial nor resolved, not by any means. And Pantload's off-handed dismissal of Chimpco's arrogation of power unto itself -- of which the Patriot Act is only one facet -- only illustrates why he is a profoundly moronic, destructive influence on serious discourse. Say that 9/11 had happened in 1997 instead of 2001 (or that Gore had been awarded the office he had actually won in 2000). Say that Clinton (or Gore) had decided to grant himself the exact same superpowers that Bush has done, with the exact same rationalizations. Would any real conservative put up with such a thing? Of course not. Nor should they.

But because they are cultists, and not actual thinkers, they do not grok that important distinction. For people whose default pretense is that of principle, they sure have a hard fucking time keeping their stories straight. If Hillary Clinton wins in 2008, would you or would you not have a problem with her keeping the superpowers previously arrogated to Chimpco? Yes or no? After all, these unprecedented levels of unaccountability and oversight are necessary to keep us all safe, and if that should happen to require a periodic Pantload Probe, well, such is the price of freedom, fatboy.

As for Kerry being president, I'm actually content to give him that one, though not for the reasons he supposes. There is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that, had Kerry won, he would have faced endless foot-dragging from this Congress, and no less volume of shameless finger-pointing from the usual professional goofbals, and their reliable media enablers. Even if Kerry had been able to implement a successful plan for Iraq -- unlike the current administration, because they clearly don't have a plan -- he never would have gotten credit for it. It would have been a no-win situation for him. It always is with these people, because again, they are cultists, always looking for someone else to do the thinking for them.

Finally, no fisking of any ClownHall column, much less one of Goldberg's, would be complete without at least a quick glance at the general level of erudition and cognition in the comments. There actually are some decent surprises, but the few cogent conservative dissentions of commenters such as TimF are drowned by the deluge of furious all-caps up-to-the-second-knuckle nose-picking emotionalism by repetitive, sub-literate halfwits such as blondieinpittsburgh and Kathy. Tall Chick actually makes a game attempt to lay some planks of thought, then launches this tired rhetorical scud:

President Bush's ability to mangle the English language should not be "misunderestimated." But I'm glad that no one follows me around with a microphone.

I've been hearing variations of this one for years, and it's never washed (much like Jonah Goldberg, hyulk hyulk). Look, no one follows you around with a microphone because no one cares what you think. But if they did care enough to do so, one would hope you'd have enough pride in yourself and your tremendous responsibilities to prepare yourself in every area, including even modest extemporaneous oratorical skills.

It's not that Bush can't read a speech; he can do that shit just fine, however disagreeable the content may be. And I'm sure he can read an executive summary or a briefing perfectly well. But there is a crystal-clear pattern of him being unable to think on his feet at even a moderate level, and that bespeaks unpreparedness at the intellectual and cognitive levels. He always, always answers unexpected questions with the same tired rhetorical boilerplate we waded through several years ago. Look, asshole, if you're not actually going to bother to learn anything useful in your tenure at the most important job in the world, at least get some new schtick.

Also, you know, people "follow him with microphones" to these things called "press conferences", which are arranged at a time and place of his own staff's choosing. This cliché of the media sandbagging poor ol' Lonesome Rhodes at his worst is worse than useless; it's a flat-out fucking lie.

But note the generally reverential tone which most of the commenters (especially the female ones, and the closet cases such as "Coach") have for Bush. They don't have the cognitive skills to get out of their own way, so they just put their faith in his (or His) Master Plan.

Well, here's your master plan. How do you like it?

WASHINGTON - A day after a Pentagon report described spreading sectarian violence and increasingly complex security problems in Iraq, President Bush painted a rosier picture. "Our commanders and diplomats on the ground believe that Iraq has not descended into a civil war," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "They report that only a small number of Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, while the overwhelming majority want peace and a normal life in a unified country."

The president acknowledged "a bloody campaign of sectarian violence" and the "difficult and dangerous" work of trying to end it.

On Friday, the Pentagon reported that death squads increasingly targeting mainly Iraqi civilians heighten the risk of civil war. The report, the latest in a series required by Congress, also said the Sunni-led insurgency "remains potent and viable."

"Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months," the report said.

Considering even handpicked interim Iraqi leader (and former CIA asset) Iyad Allawi was talking about civil war almost six months ago, you have to wonder what exactly it would take for Bush and his claque of morons to make the semiotic leap from "sectarian violence" to "civil war" -- and whether it would make much difference in their mindless approach to the reality on the ground, as they dutifully prepare for the next tragic clusterfuck in Iran.

And while we figure out more ways to lay waste to life, limb, and future, useful cephalopods like Pantload and his readers will waggle their tentacles in unison, patiently awaiting the next feeding.